Chapter 48
When Lyv and Gideon came to the room where Destan's body was being kept, they parted ways. He gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the forehead before going off to find Thia, giving her some time to spend alone with Laurel.
Lyv pushed open the wooden doors to the open room with several large windows, paintings hanging on the walls, and a few plushy chairs situated around it. She found Laurel in one chair in front of the cushioned table where Destan lay, his eyes closed, hands resting on his stomach, and clothing changed so there was no sign of the blood that had stained his previous ones. Jai was nowhere to be seen, but she knew he'd been sitting in the second chair beside her just a little while before.
Now, Lyv took that spot, looking up at Destan and feeling the heartbreak raging through her chest once more. Looking at Laurel, Lyv reached over and took her hand in both of her own. She was wearing Destan's favorite dark red jacket, though it was far too big for her.
"Jai went to get the guardsmen who are going to help move him to the ship," Laurel murmured, her eyes glassy. She reached up, wiping away the tears that began to fall. "He sent a raven home, too, telling Mother and Father that Destan...that he's..."
"Laurel."
"Michel is coming back from Escarral, too. Being a susurrate, he already heard the whispers of what happened. He'll be there as soon as we dock." Laurel still held onto Lyv's hands, but ran her other one over the jacket she wore. "I thought he'd want to be buried in this since it was his favorite, but I...I can't do it. I can't let go of it."
"Then you keep it. You know he'd want you to have it."
Reaching up, Laurel wiped away a few more tears before looking over at Lyv. "How do I do this? How do I go through life without the one person who has been there since our beginning?"
Lyv was going to answer from experience...though that experience seemed like a lie now.
"You take it in stride," she told her. "You take it day by day. You have your family and friends to help you through it. And it will get easier. There will be moments when the grief seems to consume you, but then it will get better. You'll be able to look back at memories without crying. You'll make new ones that you will wish he was there for, but you know he will always be there. We will help you through it because you're not alone. It might feel like it right now, but you're not."
"I know," Laurel said thickly, nodding. "I know he will be."
The two sat in silence with Lyv being there for comfort. After a while, Laurel's tears dried, but Lyv could still feel her exhaustion, having not even slept the night before. She would have to ask her later that night if she wanted Lyv's help in getting to sleep.
A knock on the door made both females look up. Once Laurel called them to come in, four guardsmen stood at attention with bowed heads as she stood and walked over to them.
"It's time, my princess," one of them told her. "The ships leave in a few hours, but the crown prince sent us to move him aboard."
"Yes," Laurel nodded, trying to put on a brave face. "He's ready, just...be careful, all right?"
"Of course," he said, and all four of them bowed before going to where Destan was.
Lyv walked arm in arm out of the room with Laurel before giving her a hug. She still had some things to get together before they left for Ayveri, so they parted ways once they were out in the hallway and watched as the princess walked behind guardsmen carrying the body of her brother.
Lyv walked through the hallways of the palace, peering into the different rooms and returning the greetings of the staff who she passed. Though she knew the way to the room she'd been staying in, something else was gravitating her toward another part. She went up a spiral staircase, looking out through every window she passed. The short hallway she found led to two large, wooden double doors. It was the only entrance, but she knew other rooms were on that level, interconnecting with one another as hers did back home in Escarral
Her heart was pounding as she neared the doors, but she didn't know why. Not until she pushed them open and peering inside.
It was the room from her dream, her nursery from when she was a baby, with the same view of the city stretched out past the balcony in front of her.
It hadn't changed, even though twenty years had passed. Most of the furniture was covered, including the wardrobe that stood along one wall and few other pieces. The rocking chair in the corner by big windows looked like it had just recently been sat in and everything else, including the case filled with books, had been dusted.
The hand-carved crib was still in the center of the room, the mobile of the moon and stars glistening above it. Inside were several stuffed animals, including a small dragon that looked strikingly like Roshan when he had just hatched from his egg. Lyv reached inside and picked it up, smiling as she held it close to her chest and continued looking around the room.
And found Alberich watching her from the doorway.
He nodded down to the dragon in her arms. "That one used to be your favorite," he told her with a smile. "Anytime we couldn't seem to get you to calm down, we'd just put that in your arms and you would go straight to sleep."
"Really?" she asked. "It does seem appropriate, though."
"Bridget always used to joke that we would have two dragons around Asturia once you were old enough. She unknowingly was telling the truth, wasn't she?"
"Roshan has made himself at home here, you know."
"Oh, I know. And so does the majority of the people. He's won them over and will probably gain a little bit of weight with all he's been eating."
Lyv laughed slightly, keeping hold of the dragon in one arm and reaching up to touch the mobile with the other. "How do you think he won over all of Ayveri?"
Alberich continued to watch her as she walked around the room, picking up some of the books to flip through, uncovering the wardrobe that was now empty of the infant clothes, and staring out the closed balcony doors to the city below.
"I had a dream about this room," Lyv told him without looking back. "You were there, too, though I could never see your face. You were holding me, talking to me, and I couldn't have been more then a few weeks old. I wanted so badly to know who you were. It happened a couple of times, revealing just a little bit more with every one of them. And it wasn't until the other day that I realized the female who had been watching us wasn't Guinevere. It was Bridget, my real mother. But the sirens always sounded, no matter what."
"That was the day she took you," Alberich explained, and Lyv could hear the pain in his voice. "We still don't know how it happened, but now that we've seen what Mik can do...well, he had to have been the one to help her. All I remember is shadows, Bridget screaming for me to get you out as she put that wall up to hold back your magic and the glamour to hide who you really were...and then nothing.
"When we woke, it was just the two of us in this room and you...you were gone. I have never seen Bridget the way she was then. She took Chesnan and went in search of you, casting a locator spell, but she wasn't able to get anything. She'd done too good of a job in hiding you that she couldn't find you herself. And after we thought we'd lost you when she was pregnant with you..."
Lyv's eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean?"
Bridget was the one to answer as she walked in the room, her arms crossed over her dark gray and silver dress. Her hair was loose and flowing in curls down her back after cleaning up from their day's work. Lyv had yet to do so, still in her leather pants and dirtied tunic.
"At the end of the war, when Guinevere's army finally got to Asturia, she and I fought before I was able to capture her and lock her away," she explained. "I was only about three months along with you. That morning, when I started bleeding...we thought I was having a miscarriage."
Bridget made her way over to where they were standing by the crib and reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind Lyv's ear.
"That final fight...we still didn't know if I'd lost you or not. My magic was trying to protect you and I was putting everything toward doing just that. That's why I was so weak in fighting Guinevere. I was so focused on making sure I didn't lose you, not after having tried for so long to have a child."
Lyv remembered back to her and Thia's conversation about that final fight between Bridget and Guinevere. She thought that she had been weakened by something similar to the iron cuff Lyv had worn the year before, but now...now she knew that she had weakened herself to save her daughter before she was even born.
Alberich wrapped his arm around Bridget, kissing the side of her head as the memory must have flashed through both their minds. "After Guinevere was captured, I was able to heal her and make sure you were all right. It was an easy bleed to heal, but still could have caused her to lose you. But you were okay and I made sure Bridget never strained herself throughout the rest of the pregnancy so we didn't have another scare."
Bridget snorted out a laugh. "In other words, he basically stuck me on bedrest and practically carried me everywhere we went when he did let me get out of the palace."
"And when you were born...the whole city celebrated for a month afterward," Alberich smiled, but then it dropped. "It didn't last long, though, because Guinevere escaped with you just a few weeks later. We hadn't even had time to announce your birth to Dalcaine because we were so focused on finding you. That's why only the people of Asturia only know about your existence. We asked everyone to not talk about it, giving that we thought Guinevere had you killed. But then we heard the rumor from Escarral that Guinevere had given birth to a daughter while in captivity here. We couldn't go there ourselves, but we sent someone who we trusted with everything we had. We tried everything...but Guinevere had magic on her side then, too. No one could get close to Escarral, not me, your mother, Drue, or any other full-blooded Fae, human, or fairy from Dalcaine. No one except..."
Bridget continued about the mysterious person. "She had been working with us for a while before you were born and has continued to watch over you once she found you in Escarral. She tried to find ways to get you out, but they were all unsuccessful. She decided to stay, though, watch over you. We've always known you were safe, even though you were with Guinevere. She made sure to tell us that you rebelled against her as much as you could and was kept safe by Bence."
"Who...?" Lyv began to ask...but realization dawned on her as she thought about the one female who had always been there when she needed her. "Jules."
Bridget and Alberich shared a smile and a laugh.
"Yes, Jules," Bridget nodded. "She's been Drue's female friend for a couple decades until she went to Escarral to watch over you."
"We keep trying to convince them they're mates, but..."
"But they're both so hard-headed."
Lyv was still gaping at the information. "Jules...the tavern owner who loves threatening any male who looks at me the wrong way and loves ripping Gideon a new one whenever he breaks something of hers? The one who has never had a problem with telling Guinevere off in the past about anything? The one who has definitely seen me get drunk before because she's the one who provided the alcohol?"
"Yes, that is definitely her," Alberich laughed.
"And hold on...you said a few decades...so Jules is half-Fae," Lyv repeated. "Why didn't she ever tell me at least that?"
"That was up to her to tell. But she's been keeping us updated on you, sending letters every few months. They stopped after the siege last year since nothing could go out of Escarral without being intercepted. We heard the stories, though, and mostly about you. I can't believe you went without your magic for that long..."
"I got used to it, but now..."
"Now it's something completely different."
Lyv nodded, feeling the familiar yet different hum inside her.
Her mother reached up to run her hand over her head again. "After Destan's funeral in Ayveri...you are more than welcome to come back here. We can redo these rooms since they have always been yours. Roshan will have a place with Chesnan. We'll finally get to introduce you to all of Dalcaine as our daughter, the heir and savior of Asturia. We can see just what all you can do with your magic with training. You can go to Escarral when you want, though I would love to come along and meet the man who has taken such good care of you for all these years. And...I want to get to know you, Lyv, and you get to know us. Though twenty years hadn't seemed like a lot to us before, these past twenty have without you. I'm sorry we never were able to find a way to get you out. We tried everything, but we couldn't break that spell that seemed to be over you. Not until you were able to seemingly break it yourself."
Come back to Asturia...she could do that.
Lyv wanted to spend time here where she was born and then go back to Escarral and visit with Bence, her sisters, and her family. And Jules...well, Lyv wanted to know more about her now, even though she'd thought she already had.
She wanted to travel farther than she had before, outside of Dalcaine and Escarral. Ethran, maybe? She had Roshan. Now that he was fit to fly with her and a little more weight with supplies, she knew he could do it.
"Just think about it and let us know," Bridget told her then, kissing her forehead. "We're staying in Ayveri for a week, so you could come back with us afterward if you want."
Lyv nodded. "I'll think about it...but I definitely want to spend some time here, getting to know you more, getting to know Asturia. I just...there's Gideon and Thia. They could come up to visit, though. I want to be there for Laurel, Eamon, Emmeric, and Alexea, too. And then Jai..."
She looked down at the stuffed dragon she still held in her arms and then at the others inside the crib. Thinking back to that dream of hers with her and Jai in bed with their newborn daughter, she couldn't help but see that future for them in this room, with her in that crib. She saw them visiting from Ayveri, having her grow up in both it and Asturia.
And Lyv knew her name, which flashed through her head at that very moment, having it be after someone they both loved very much.
"Jai is a good male, Alyvia," Alberich told her then. "We've known him all his life. Of course, he was a little...crazy...in his younger years, but we noticed a change in him more recently. We never thought it was because of you."
"I need to talk to him," Lyv told them after a pause. "Before we leave to go back to Ayveri, before we let the silence between us stretches out for longer than it should."
Bridget squeezed her hand in comfort and nodded. "Then we'll make sure to send him up this way."
They both gave Lyv a hug together before leaving her with her thoughts.
Lyv continued to clutch her stuffed dragon as she watched her real one flying around in the distance with Erly and Chesnan. She'd pulled the balcony doors open so she could take in the view of the city, which had only changed slightly in the twenty years since the time of her dream.
The encampment that had surrounded the city began to disassemble and the troops were packing up to travel back to their own lands. Lyv and the others wouldn't be traveling with those from Ayveri as they had on the way up. The ships in the harbor were those from Asturia and would take them two days to get back to the capital city. As a sign of mourning, their flags were flying at half mast and the sails were made of white fabric with black embroidering along the edges.
Almost an hour passed before she left the balcony and walked back into the room, knowing she still needed to get her things before they left. They only had an hour or two before the ships set sail. It looked like talking with Jai wasn't going to happen. She knew he had to be upset with her, especially with what she'd said. She was cursing herself now. Walking away the day before...gods, she shouldn't have done that...
But when she turned after closing the balcony doors, he was there, dressed in black pants, boots, and a light beige tunic, his hair pulled halfway up, and those sapphire eyes locked with hers. He looked tired and worn and hesitant as he stood in the doorway.
Jai swallowed hard before taking a step forward, letting the door close behind him. "I'm sorry it took me so long to come back to you."
Slowly, Lyv placed the stuffed dragon back in the crib and took a deep breath, staring up at him. "You don't have to apologize...because it was more than worth the wait," she told him, her voice wavering.
And rushed into his arms.
***Well, guys, now we're really nearing the end. We've only got 2 chapters left! *gives everyone a big hug after everything that's happened these last few chapters* I promise it will get happier in the next book! And next, we get a one-on-one chapter between Lyv and Jai. How do you guys hope it goes?
Give me your thoughts, so comment and vote!
Happy reading!
- Ansley